Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 19

by Unknown

Now, it happened that this same Gustavus, after almost all the sap of his body had been eliminated by fighting, and there seemed to be scarcely enough left to lubricate the muscles that stretched from promontory to point of his big bones, like tough hausers, took it into his head to wish for a wife. We doubt if all the physiologists or psychologists that ever hunted for traces of the spirit among the white guts of the head could tell how such an idea came into such an extraordinary place; and if his heart was as dry as the voluntary muscles of his body, nothing short of a dislocation of Cupid’s right arm could ever have sent into such a leathery organ the tickling shaft. True, however, it is as death, that Gustavus did actually fall in love, and the symptoms were just as extraordinary as the passion itself; for there never was heard in any man’s lungs before, such a rattle of sighs; and as for the length of his jaws, the never a rough wood-cut of John Bunyan’s hero in the Slough of Despond could come within many degrees of their lugubrious longitude. It is even true that the power of the tender passion reached to his stomach—a place of all others that might a priori have been considered perfectly independent of all moral impulses whatsomever. Nothing before, except hunger itself, had ever affected that organ; and, indeed, ensconced behind and between, and beneath such ribs, nothing short of death itself might have been supposed capable of reaching it, or subduing its tough hide, its viscous linings, and its gastric juice, stronger than the best gin that ever was made at Schiedam.

Now the petit bel chose that had thus produced such an effect upon the moral and physical economy of this big son of Mars, was no other than a mere toy of a thing—a little milliner called Julia Briggs—scarcely so big, when divested of the padding and stuffing with which her art enabled her to supply her deficiency of natural size, as one of his huge limbs. But this may be no manner of marvel to those who are versant in the mysteries of love, who, being himself a small creature, seems to delight in throwing into the smallest of his victims the greatest portion of his power. It is difficult to see philosophically any final cause in the curious fact in nature; but surely, the never a man, who has any observation in him, will deny, that pigmy beauties and colossal swains (and vice versa) have a singular power of producing in each other the tender passion. It may be owing to nature’s love of the juste milieu, that thus induces her to take this mode of keeping up a reasonable mean size among human creatures, or it may be any one of a thousand other speculations; but what care we for such theories, when we have the fact to state as an undoubted truth, that Gustavus fell in love with Julia Briggs, as standing like a mighty Anak, in the Canongate of Edinburgh, he saw the little creature skipping along, twisting her little limbs as if she would have dislocated her joints in her efforts to appear graceful, in the eyes of mankind generally, and in those of the gigantic Gustavus, whom she had often seen looking after her, in particular! Successful beyond any prior example of her wriggling evolution of her graces, the little baggage—as quick in her eye as ever were Pip, Trip, or Skip, the maids of honour (according to Drayton) of Queen Mab—saw at once that she had hit the proper twirl and twinkle, at last, that would subdue the involuntary muscle that had so long been useless beneath the ribs of the great Gustavus. The moment the effect was produced, the sinews of his body began to move, and away he stalked after her, with strides as long as the whole height a capite ad calcem of the quarry upon which he intended to pounce. It spoke well of the power of “her harness of gossamer,” that it stood the tug of so huge a victim; and, as she turned her twinkling eye to observe the triumph of her power, she did not fail to rivet the chains by some higher displays of graceful contortion, that made his eyeballs roll in the large sockets, as if he had seen a hobgoblin, in place of Julia Briggs, the petite marchande de modes.

This was just as good a beginning as ever a sly man-catcher essayed in the world of love, since the days of Helen; and the arch kidnapper knew very well how to follow up her wile; for, after displaying, by a proper caper, as much of her ancle as would do the business, she skipped away, as nimbly as Nymphidia in the service of Oberon’s queen, and was not again seen till she opened the window of her mother’s house, and displayed herself, capless and coifless, to her staring admirer. The capture was now completed. Jove himself was never more completely entoiled by the chains of the little baggage Iynge; and, during the whole of that day, Gustavus strode along the pavement, opposite the window of his charmer, as if he had been on duty before a besieged city. He had just as little power to walk away as he had to circumscribe his step to the ordinary measure of God’s creatures; every stride occupying, at least, four feet of pavement, and being executed so regularly and methodically, that one step did not differ from another by a single inch. But it is a mere bagatelle to describe these pendulous movements, produced, for the first time, by the spirit of love; while, to execute with truth a faithful picture of the painful contortions of a countenance originally formed a wood-cut of extraordinary dimensions, and now under the soft, melting influence of the tenderest of passions, would require a goose-quill, owning no less an influence than the spirit of an immortal genius. As the loves of some of the inferior animals are expressed by sounds and signs that seem to indicate nothing but fierce war, so might the demonstrations of this extraordinary affair of the heart, exhibited through the grotesque motions of muscles that had been as rigid as dried leather for twenty years, be looked upon as anything rather than signs of the languishing passion which, as Augustin says, will make a musician out of an ass. Yet, doubtless, there was, both in his goggle-eyes and lengthened face, an expression that was intended for softness and languishment; and it is not impossible, that, if one had been apprized a priori of the intention, he might have discovered in the ludicrous gesticulations some resemblance to at least a burlesque of what is only a very ridiculous exhibition at the very best.

Love that is long a-coming, comes at last with a terrible onset—overturning all sense and prudence, kicking up the heels of all forms of etiquette, and removing every impediment to its progress. It is but a very small matter to say, that Gustavus could not sleep under the hug or embrace of the new customer that had taken such a violent hold of his heart, though we do not deem it an equally insignificant announcement, that a man who could swallow a couple of pounds of flesh at a down-sitting, should lose his gustative and digestive powers to such an extent that the knocking of his heart sounded audibly through his empty stomach, as if it had been a whispering gallery. But love is a leveller in more senses than the vulgar one; and the only circumstance about the matter of this particular case at all remarkable, was, that such effects, upon a body iron-bound as it was, and of such gigantic proportions, should have been produced by an agent of such truly insignificant dimensions. A resolute disciplinarian, however, at all points, without a single qualm of fear or doubt, and accustomed to attack a city or a haunch of beef with equal sang froid, the love-smitten victim, on the third day after his seizure, drew up his huge limbs to their full extent, till he seemed like the Colossus of Rhodes, and settled the whole affair by one resolute gnash of his under maxillary bone. Two strides took him to the door, one or two more brought him down stairs to the street, and the never a man that stalked off ground that was to be his own, went along with such strides as he used in making his way to the house of Julia Briggs. With one solitary idea in his head, and one word on his tongue—though there was room for a thousand—he went direct up to the door, knocked, like one of Froissard’s warriors at the barricades, was admitted, turned off the momentous question of marriage by one heavy lurch of his jaw, and settled a matter that danglers take years about in the space of time that a thirsty Bacchanalian would occupy in taking a long pull of jolly good ale.

CHAPTER III.
GUSTAVUS IS MARRIED.

In the week afterwards, the couple were united in the holy bands of matrimony; and, surely, to say that there was any ceremony about such a union, would be a burlesque of the mysteries of Hymen. Yet, rapid as were the movements, and wholesale the conclusion, no man ever put his neck in the noose with such imperturbable gravity, for, during the whole period occupied by the feast, which was in the form of a supper, no man could have observed in his gaunt face any one of the three laughs, Ionic, Megaric, or Sardonic, with which the face is usually convulsed; the only indication approaching to a cachination in the midst of the whoops and yells of the feasters, being a grin in the shape of a risus Ajacis, that defied all power of analysis. But even this caricature of a display of good humour, insignificant as it may seem, shewed to those who knew the man that he was labouring under the influence of some extraordinary emotion, as nothing of the kind had ever been seen in his countenance since the day on which he hewed down so unmercifully the French at St Sebastian. Nor, on the following day, when he had fairly entered upon the supreme happiness of the married state, was there seen any palpable sign of the joy that, of course, penetrated through all his well-mailed thoracic viscera—unless it were, perhaps, that his face had even increased in length, and the leathery aspect of all the “celestial index” of the soul was, if possible, more grim than ever.

The getting of a wife is, after all, but a very small matter in comparison of the ruling of her; and sure, if ever there was a man in the world, since the days of the grim Hercules, who bungled the matter out and out, that had any chance of subjecting his wife to the requisite thraldom and subordination, Gustavus was that man; for a look of him was enough to tame a Bucephalus any day; and it was evident that he cogitated mighty achievements in that way, if one might have judged from the marshalling character of his step as he paraded the house; his taciturnity, deeper than the wells of truth; and the air of a resolute importance that was enthroned among the deep furrows of his extraordinary countenance. The first fruits of his study—and verily he must have been a man of no common nerve that could study during the honeymoon—was the important conclusion, that the sooner his Julia was entoiled in the multifarious affairs of domestic economy, and the imperative duties of ministering to his every want and comfort, the better chance he enjoyed of subjecting her thoroughly to the power of his stern discipline. So straight began he, accordingly, upon the instant, and, by the aid of a small douceur, got quit of his servant—an act that savoured of extraordinary sagacity and wisdom, in so much as it involved the additional advantages of saving her wages, and keeping and turning his wife into a source of profit, as she would doubtless be the fountain of much delectation. It is not unlikely that the maxim, when the devil finds a man or woman idle, he straightway sets them aworking—or, as Erasmus expresses it, Ocium ad omnem nequitiam impellit—had a large share in this determination; for, as to the opinion of Shakspeare, that idleness is the source of love, he despised it hepatically, and calculated with certainty that love’s sweetest labour—the contributing to the comfort of her lord—would be diligently pursued by his beloved and most adorable Julia Briggs.

All this was just as fair a piece of human calculation, and as probable a conclusion, as could ever be found beyond the regions of pure mathematics; and so, placing every fibre of his big body, excepting some portion of the heart, under the rigid authority of the genius of command, he issued, with an air a deuced deal more martial than marital, his stern orders, which were as recondite as they were energetic—going into the very medullary penetralia of the matter of cooking and housekeeping with a knowledge and consideration that would have done honour to Mrs Margaret Dods of the Cleikum Inn herself. Nor was this to be much wondered at; for, had he himself not washed and dressed in the Peninsula, and had he not there also foraged, and cooked, and swallowed as no bon vivan ever did before, since the days of the three Apicii? The never a man had ever doubted it; and if he had, it would just have been as safe for the unhappy wretch to have disputed his courage as to have expressed one word of scepticism on a subject that so nearly concerned his honour—for, in either case, he would have been knocked down.

It would be a libel on womankind to say, that the polite Julia, who had been a standing toast among the small men of fashion connected with the depots of millinery wares about the town, had any affection for the bare-boned Colossus she had wedded on a week’s notice; and it would have been an insult to her spirit to have said that she feared him, though he was at least three times the size of any of her former lovers. She had married him, as all women of her stamp do, just for a living and protection—the one to be afforded from his pay, and the other from his bones and sinews—a very fair calculation for a woman of so small a calibre to make; and, accordingly, she would have declared war against him at once, big and terrible as he was, if she could have seen any good to come of it; for, as to the fearful expression of his leather-bound jaws, when he issued the order for work, she cared no more for it than if it had been a smile of mawkish love-doting. It is not likely that she had ever heard of Omphale, who ruled the biggest man of the world by her slipper; but she had not thrown away the needle, which had been used on the linens of fair, personable men, to take it up again to sew for a husband that never was intended by nature to be loved; and, as for supplying its place with the spit, she looked upon the proposition with as much contempt as she would have bestowed on a proposal that she should love the gigantic caricature she had married for nothing else in the world but her own convenience. All that was as plain as noon-day; but open war was not her tact, any more than it is the tact of Puck to fight the regular Goliaths of the earth at a fair stand-up or monomachy; and it is scarcely necessary to say, that the open duellum is no more relished by the women of her class generally, than it was by the “eel or deil” of a creature that Gustavus had raised to the high station of his wife. Nor had she any difficulty in fixing on her plans; for nature was just as kind to her as to the rest of her sex in suggesting the means of perplexing her lord, though it is not improbable that, if she had known that his intention in making her work was to keep her out of all that species of devilry that comes to women out of idleness, she might have been inclined to vindicate the nobility of her kind, by some more devilish trick than mere unaided nature might at first have prompted.

The sharp, vixen eye of the pigmy sempstress had not been slow in perceiving that the two grand sine quibus non of her husband’s comfort, were pure linens and well-cooked victuals; and she knew, moreover—doubtless in the way by which the sex come to their secret knowledge of men’s ways—that he had been in the habit of securing these grand objects by the labour of his own hands. The antipodes of each other in everything, they were as unlike each other in respect of these domestic duties, as they were in the sizes of their bodies; for while, as has been already hinted, there never was a man since the days of Pope Joan that excelled more in the mysteries of washing, dressing, and cooking than Gustavus, there never was a woman that knew less of these recondite arts than Mrs Julia M’Iver. The sexes of the two should, therefore, clearly have been reversed—he should have been the wife, and she the husband; and Julia knew this just as well as we or any other individual who presumes to question the excellence of the laws that regulate matrimonial matches, when she resolved to bring about a state of matters that would just be the same as if the potentiality we have mentioned had just in fact been a reality. She accordingly began by spoiling every piece of domestic labour to which she applied her hands; his linens being as much of the tint of saffron as ever were those of a gareteer, who enjoys the luxury of a pole and rope put forth from a skylight; and his victuals as wretchedly dressed as ever a devil-sent cook in the kingdom could have mangled out of the fair gifts of nature. Nothing in the way of destruction could have been more skilfully managed; and it is not too much to say, that, though the fair Julia had lifted her delicate hand, and attempted to knock him down, or performed any of the other culpæ gravissimæ that appertain to the privileges of the sex, she could not have more effectually roused the wrath, of the mighty Gustavus.